The last male descendant of the aristocratic Benbow family, Horace served as a noncombatant with the YMCA during World War I. Like his father he is a lawyer. His passion for glass blowing identifies him as an artist-figure, albeit a hapless one. Like Quentin Compson, he is characterized by his idealism and his ineffectuality, and he is often depicted at the mercy of women: his sister Narcissa, his mistress and eventual wife Belle, and even Belle's sister, Joan, with whom he has a very brief affair. By the end of the novel he and Belle have moved to a new town some distance from Jefferson, where Horace feels very much in exile; he returns to Jefferson as the central character in Sanctuary (1931).